


under cloud and under star

by niqaeli



Category: Last Rune Series - Mark Anthony
Genre: Gen, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-19
Updated: 2007-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 02:41:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1627235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/niqaeli/pseuds/niqaeli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The turn of the world couldn't end; that was what they'd fought to stop, really, in trying to stop Eldh and Earth from becoming nothingness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	under cloud and under star

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elsandry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elsandry/gifts).



Had it not been for Nim, Grace might not have noticed the woman at all. That wasn't always true; once, she would have felt the woman's spark in the web of the Weirding. But the Weirding was gone, had been for over a year--gone, along with the runes and magic of blood sorcery. Grace had been glad, really, to see the end of magic. As much good as it had brought, it seemed to bring just as much pain and misery in balance. Power had its price, she supposed.

Nim seemed nearly unchanged by the loss of magic, though. She no longer grew too fast and too strong but she still seemed to know things that no child her age, or even a full-grown adult, should know. But whatever the reason, Nim noticed the woman, shivering in the doorway. Her clothes were tattered and her hair frayed and unwashed; she tugged at it, rocking slightly.

They were out, shopping for Christmas presents for Travis and Beltan, when Nim stopped and stared into the dark, almost hidden doorway near an alleyway. "Grace," she said, quietly. "Look."

Grace had looked and been startled to see a woman who might've been pretty once; now, she reminded Grace most of Ivalaine in the depth of the madness that Shemal had visited on her.

"We should help her," Nim said, in the firm voice of an older child--far older than she should be.

Grace had held Nim tight to her as she walked up to the woman. "Hello? Are you all right?" she asked. It was a stupid question, because obviously the woman was not all right, but Grace couldn't think of anything else to ask.

"The world is burned free of my power and yet other powers remain," she whispered to herself, scratching her face deeply with ragged, torn nails. "I am half! I cannot bear it!"

Grace approached slightly closer and held out a hand. "Are you hungry?" she asked, which was probably a more useful question. "We'll get you food; there's a shelter not far from her that you can probably spend the night at." After Travis's experience on the streets of Denver, they were all charitable to the homeless and buskers and all streetfolk whenever they saw them. Still, there was something about this woman that compelled Grace further than simple charity. There was something more to this woman than mental illness.

The woman finally looked up at Grace and Nim. "I'm not hungry, starving to death, pasting but not hungry," she said before squinting at Nim. "Is she yours? No," she interrupted herself, tearing at her hair. "No, she can't be. She's all wrong for it."

Nim clutched Grace close. "She's stripped," she whispered, a bell-like chime in her voice like Child Samanda's that made Grace shiver whenever she heard it. Child Samanda was long gone, like all the other old gods and other creatures of magic. "Half gone, half-mad."

"Only half," the woman said, looking up from her mutterings, a clearer light in her eyes that reassured Grace. "Only half. You said--shelter?"

Grace nodded encouragingly as the woman stood up on shaky legs. She was clearly weak from malnutrition and exposure--she had no good way of knowing how long this woman had been on the streets but it seemed likely it had been awhile. "St. Phillips. They're a good shelter and only a few blocks from here. You don't want to spend the night out in this cold."

The woman laughed an empty, frozen laugh. "I'll never be warm," she said. "My bones are empty."

Nim buried her face in Grace's coat. Grace couldn't blame her at all; this woman, compelling as she was, was terrifying as well. "Well," Grace said briskly, "there's still no sense being out in this cold. And I'm sure you'll feel better with a meal in you. How well can you walk?"

"I'll walk the world," she said. Her gait was a little bit unsteady but surprisingly sound as Grace led the way.

Nim smiled when Grace's cel phone rang with the tune of "Now Is Born The Divine Christ Child". It was her joke with Travis, it being the Christmas season and him having been reborn in the fires of Krondisar. Travis didn't actually find it very funny but Beltan thought it was hilarious and privately Grace thought that they really had to have a sense of humour everything that had happened or it would be very easy to go mad from it all--and Travis had agreed with that, even if he did roll his eyes.

"Hi, Travis," Grace said. "What's up?"

 _"How's the christmas shopping going? Found the perfect gifts for us yet?"_ Travis's voice was slightly tinny, distorted by the cel phone network. Grace supposed some day they might fix that--but not at the price that, say, Duratek would exact.

"Oh, fine. We're pretty much done and were headed home." Grace said. "Actually, we're helping a homeless woman to St. Phillips. Nim noticed her."

 _"Ah. Well, I was wondering what you and Nim wanted to do for dinner. The stew has... sort of burned,"_ Travis said, wryly. Grace shook her head. Travis always underestimated his own cooking ability--his food was far better than anything she had ever managed in her life.

"I'll hand you off to Nim," Grace said. "I never care, you know that--I lived on so much worse at the hospital."

Nim took the phone in one hand and held it close to her ear but she still clutched at Grace with her other hand, almost seeming like a little girl her actual age for once. "Hello, Father," she said crisply, shattering that illusion. "Pizza!" she said, excitedly. "Can we have pizza?"

The homeless woman shook her head, the fey light in her eyes sparking in the dying light of day. "I can see it all around you," she says. "The echoes of power, fading away. You worked miracles! And now--pizza. Shopping. So normal. How did you do it?"

Grace shook her head. "I don't know what you're talking about," she said, firmly.

"Grace," the woman said. "That's your name. Followed you, helped you, hurt you. Sought you! You and others."

Grace grabbed the phone from Nim, who was chattering happily about the lights and stores and toys they had seen. "Sorry, Nim, this is really important," she said. "Travis? Yeah, I need you to meet me at St. Phillips. That woman I mentioned? She's clearly not well but... she knows us, about--well. Us. And, it sounds weird, but I feel obligated to her, like we owe her something."

There was a short silence on the other end of the line, as what Grace had said sunk in. _"I'll be right there,"_ Travis said.

Thankfully, they were in front of St. Phillips, so they could wait in where it was warm.

\----

Travis wasn't sure what was going on but that wasn't anything new. Neither was the dread in his heart or the pit in his stomach. It was just that he'd thought he was done with all that; he and Grace and Beltan and Nim had their life here in London. It was a good life, one free of dragons and fates and looming dooms that only they could prevent--and he'd never known how much he appreciated a simple, modern life until he'd lived one of adventure and magic.

But here it had come knocking again--even though it couldn't be anything major, Travis knew. The meeting of the Seven and the Stones had healed both Earth and Eldh, parting them permanently, and ending the magics that had flowed from each.

Travis wasn't sure what he'd expected when he walked into St. Phillips, but he hadn't expected to see Grace and Nim sitting with a Seeker.

When he and Beltan had come to London four years ago, they'd gone to the Seekers at Travis's suggestion. They hadn't had anything to their name and Travis had no intention of living on the streets again. The Seekers had resources and would've found them anyway. Now, Travis knew that the Seekers' resources had really been the Philosophers', whose motives had been less than pure, but Travis still didn't regret it. The deal they'd struck had seen them safe in the years since their journey to Earth.

They'd given the Seekers histories and biographies, maps and descriptions of Eldh. There'd been a few different Seekers who'd interviewed them and recorded it all down.

And one of the Seekers who had taken down their stories sat there: her lips cracked, hair unwashed and tangled, deep scratches on her face and arms.

"Gethsemane?" Travis said, quietly, his voice cracking over her name. She'd been the strangest of the Seekers they had dealt with, as unusual as her name itself; Deirde had, of course, been herself. The others had been driven and curious, all of them asking or clearly wanting to ask 'what was it like', but Gethsemane had never once asked, had never once looked like she wanted to know anything more than simple geography and history. She'd been quiet and slender and her almost elfin green eyes had sometimes reminded Travis of Grace.

The Seeker looked up at him, startled, and laughed. Grace just looked at him sharply, wondering how he knew her, presumably. Travis shook his head. _Later_ , he promised her mentally.

"Hello, reborn," Gethsemane said, in a broken voice nothing like the measured, quiet tones she'd had years ago. "Hello, goodbye! The world turns ever on."

"What happened?" Travis asked her.

"You mended the world," she said, lowly. "And took away the twin; Eldh is gone, spun away into her own orbit, and gone is part of me. Not all; only half-gone, half-mad."

Travis shook his head. This didn't make any sense. "What are you talking about? You're saying you were, you are magical? Did the Seekers know?"

She laughed again. "Eldh," she said, ignoring his questions, her speech suddenly crisp, "was designated AU-3 by the Seekers. I imagine you can follow the implication then that there were--are--at least two other worlds that Earth has been in contact with in some measure. There are infinite worlds, actually, but few that are close enough to touch Earth. Eldh was closest, bound up with Earth, but it was not the only world."

Grace shrugged at Travis. She'd apparently no more idea than him what was going on or why Gethsemane was lucid suddenly or why this is what she was talking about.

"Earth is, or was, a crossroads," Gethsemane said. "And people meet at crossroads. Meet and marry and--" she trailed off, seeming to have exhausted herself.

Nim looked up at them, eyes wide and bright. "You're a child of Eldh and _another_ world," she said.

"Great-great-great-grandchild," Gethsemane said slowly, rocking as she did.

"I don't understand," Grace said. "What does that mean?"

Travis held a hand to his temple--he'd tried to walk away from things like this and he thought he had finally managed it this time. Nim's bell-like voice rang through his building headache. "One of the Little Folk of Eldh and thomeone from another world than Earth or Eldh had a child, a long time ago--her anthethtor," Nim said, her lisp still pronounced. "The loth of magic took thomething from her, left her--like thith."

"Saved the world," Gethsemane interrupted. "Saved the world, lost your power, and you eat pizza; how do you do it?"

Travis shook his head. "I don't think we can help you," he said.

"You can't," she said, sadly.

Travis shivered. It was disturbing to think that there were other worlds to have touched Earth and maybe other magics left in the world. He'd never thought about the idea that maybe the loss of magic had harmed people. They'd thought it had killed him at first, that the single drop of Oru's blood having been perhaps enough to kill him like the Philosophers who had drunk deep of the blood of the Seven over the centuries, but it hadn't. They had all been fine despite losing the magics that had shaped them all. But there were apparently others who hadn't been all right. There were mysteries--like who this woman really was, why she'd been a Seeker, what other world she was descended from--that still remained.

It had been so easy to think that their stories were the only ones, so easy to think everything was fine now, that their happy ending _was_ an ending at all. Travis felt a sharp pang of guilt, realising that.

"I'm sorry," he said. "We didn't know."

"And could you? Would it change? No," Gethsemane said, lips cracking further. "It had to be; grist in the mill of fate. Can't help me, Travis Wilder, go home and eat pizza."

 _Go home and eat pizza_. That might be an accusation, angry and dismissive; but it wasn't. There was no anger in her tone at all. Somehow that made it hurt more, that simple, matter-of-fact statement. Here was a woman he had known, had liked, that he couldn't help.

Grace caught his eyes and shook her head. _Not your fault_ , her eyes seemed to say, and that's probably what she'd say aloud too. And it was probably true. They'd had no choice but that didn't make this woman's pain okay, or better, or easier. Maybe it was easier for Grace, the doctor, to accept the collateral damage. Except that wasn't fair to Grace; she wasn't numb or broken, and she couldn't like seeing this woman in pain.

"C'mon," Travis said, tiredly. "Let's go home."

Grace gathered Nim up and they left the Seeker to whatever her fate might be. Travis saw Nim looking back over her shoulder intently and thought Gethsemane seemed to flicker in the light.

When Beltan got home, he found Grace and Travis curled up tightly with Nim and when he looked at them questioningly, Travis's lips quirked involuntarily. Instead of saying anything, he just motioned the big knight over to them and held him tightly in his arms. "It was a very strange day," Travis said and kissed him.

Their happy ending hadn't been an ending at all--and maybe that was okay. The turn of the world couldn't end; that was what they'd fought to stop, really, in trying to stop Eldh and Earth from becoming nothingness.

Travis hoped that Gethsemane Schmeling would find a way through her own story as they had found a way through theirs.

ende

_Roads go ever ever on,_  
  Over rock and under tree,  
By caves where never sun has shone,  
  By streams that never find the sea;  
Over snow by winter sown,  
  And through the merry flowers of June,  
Over grass and over stone,  
  And under mountains of the moon.

Roads go ever ever on  
  Under cloud and under star,  
Yet feet that wandering have gone  
  Turn at last to home afar.  
Eyes that fire and sword have seen  
  And horror in the halls of stone  
Look at last on meadows green  
  And trees and hills they long have known.  
 

\-- JRR Tolkien, the Hobbit

 

**Author's Note:**

> It was so hard to write this story and not be able to babble at you endlessly about it! You're, like, the only other person I know who has read these books. I do hope you enjoy it; I know it wasn't nearly as heavily Travis and Beltan centric as I originally intended it to be. *wry*


End file.
